The Poems of Felicia Hemans

by Mrs. Hemans

Loud, shrill, and savage, drowning every cry;

And, lo! the spoiler in the regal dwelling,

Death—bursting on the halls of revelry!

Ere on their brows one fragile rose-leaf die,

The sword hath raged through joy’s devoted train;

Ere one bright star be faded from the sky,

Red flames, like banners, wave from dome and fane;

Empire is lost and won—Belshazzar with the slain.[204]

[Belshazzar’s Feast had previously been published in the Collection of Poems from Living Authors, edited for a benevolent purpose by Mrs Joanna Baillie.—Memoir, p. 68.

“Miss Baillie’s volume contained several poems by Mrs Hemans; some jeux d’esprit, by the late Miss Catherine Fanshawe, a woman of rare wit and genius, in whose society Scott greatly delighted; and, inter alia, Mr William Howison’s early ballad of Polydore, which had been originally published under Scott’s auspices, in the Edinburgh Register for 1810.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. v. p. 287.